


Three Visitations

by RobberBaroness



Series: Darkest Timeline [5]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22230160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: Three knights, and a triad of magical encounters.
Relationships: Gawain/Dame Ragnelle, Guinevere/Lancelot du Lac, Guinevere/Mordred (Arthurian), referenced Guinevere/Arthur
Series: Darkest Timeline [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1598476
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Three Visitations

_ “I’m so frightened... Maleagant thinks I’ll marry him while Arthur still lives! He’s sworn to kill Kay and my ladies one by one if I resist him. Lancelot, what am I going to do?” _

_ Lancelot had held his Queen tightly and kissed her on the forehead. She had not resisted, but leaned into his arms and drawn comfort from them. Her gown grew red with the blood of his wounds, and it was beautiful. A sign of where he had touched her. _

“I saved her from Maleagant and left her to Mordred. I should have taken her. I should have dragged her along with me and kept her here. She would have been safe from him, and I never would have laid a hand on her unless she asked me to.”

Galahad’s angel looked on his father with icy contempt.

“Liar.”

Arthur’s army still encircled Joyous Gard, a castle in utter disarray, but Gawain had pulled out without explanation. It hadn’t been fear or exhaustion- they’d simply fallen back to tend their own wounds and then he had vanished. If Arthur had ordered him to do so, why? The only explanation Lancelot could think of was that his former King had finally gotten it through his head that Mordred was the greater threat to Guinevere, but then he would have pulled away his entire army.

It didn’t matter, really. In single combat with Gawain or taking apart the entire force of Camelot one by one, he would kill anyone he needed to if it would close the difference between himself and Guinevere.

Lancelot ran a hand through his sandy hair, now matted with blood- she’d loved that hair, praised its color and its shine, even ran her fingers through it that night in Maleagant’s prison- and listened through the doorway to the sound of chatter. He heard two knights- Lionel and Hector de Maris, he thought, but couldn’t be sure- discussing the battle.

“Bedivere is setting up the catapults,” said one. “Joyous Gard may not last the night. We need Lancelot’s guidance, and we need it now.”

“Forget it,” said the other. “He’s mad now. All he does anymore is rave about Guinevere.” Their voices faded as they walked away from his door.

“Do you hear that?” asked Galahad. “And from your own men. Soon you’ll be better known as a lunatic than you ever were as a knight. Perhaps they’ll still write songs about you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lancelot repeated aloud. “It doesn’t matter if they have catapults, it doesn’t matter how many of them there are. If they’re foolish enough to attack me, I’ll kill them all.”

“You could let them kill you,” Galahad said in what Lancelot would have sworn was a mocking voice if he’d thought his son capable of humor. “Suicide is a mortal sin, but so is murder, betrayal of one’s benefactor, and the violation of women.”

“I’ll not die,” said Lancelot. “Not while she is in danger.”

“Would she want you to save her if she was? Or would your touch so terrify her that she would take even Mordred over you?”

Lancelot seized his sword and spun around upon the angel. With one thrust, he sent the blade through Galahad’s torso- or where it should have been. Now there was nothing standing before him. He always had that trick of vanishing when he was in danger, the cowardly little bastard. Or perhaps there simply was no violence in heaven and he could not be touched. It was not as if Lancelot would ever get there and find out now.

“You’d kill your own son for telling the truth?” came Galahad’s voice from nowhere in particular. “You really are a monster.”

Lancelot shut out Galahad’s voice as best he could. If there were only some way he could find comfort, some way he could find release... But he’d always sought out Guinevere in the past when burdened with injury or madness. She was the only one in all of Camelot before whom he could appear weak, because she knew he was truly strong. She knew he would be strong when the right time came. And he’d thought she knew he loved her.

What wouldn’t he give to be back in Maleagant’s castle right now. To have her looking at him in admiration as he did what he did best, killing for the sake of honor. She’d beamed at him when he’d slain Maleagant, she’d kissed him on the cheek, she’d sung his praises to anyone who would listen.

And now the last thing he’d seen of her had been her weeping into Mordred’s arms. It would not be the last he would see of her, Lancelot swore.

“The devil pities himself, too” said Galahad. 

***

“I’m not your court witch. I don’t sit in your tower and cast spells on your behalf, and I didn’t come here at your command. I came to Camelot because I thought it would be funny to see my brother’s work in tatters, not to watch you have a tantrum.”

Morgan was regretting coming to Camelot at all, now that she brought it up. Lovely and well-dressed, with brown hair so dark as to be nearly black, the scowl upon her face undermined her beauty. This little visit was feeling less like one of triumph and more like an unpleasant family obligation every moment.

Mordred was usually good for his hospitality towards her, and she usually enjoyed seeing the dark boy with his large blue eyes who reminded her so much of her late sister, but she had apparently caught him in mid-crisis, screaming and on the verge of tears, all because that little flower of his had gotten away. Good for her, as far as Morgan was concerned. Her respect for Guinevere had risen significantly.

“You can find her, Aunt. I know you can! You can turn men to stone and disguise fire as a cloak.”

“Both different things entirely than finding a woman who doesn’t want to be found. Have you at least kept a strand of her hair or something that I could use as a connection? No, don’t answer that- I really don’t want to know.”

“Damn it all, Aunt Morgan! Why do you toy with me? Isn’t all this what you wanted?”

She was beginning to wonder that herself. Wasn’t it what she had wanted? Then why did it feel so unpleasant?

“Oh, pull yourself together, Mordred.” Morgan took a sip from a goblet full of Camelot’s expensive wine reserve. “You have bigger concerns than Guinevere to worry about. Any day now, Arthur’s going to pull his men away from Joyous Gard, once Lancelot has been killed or word of your actions reaches him, and then you’re really going to need my help.”

“To hell with Lancelot!” Mordred reached over and grabbed Morgan by the arm. Ordinarily, a simple raising of one of her eyebrows would have been enough to cow him into an apology, but apparently her nephew was far gone beyond that. It was a disquieting situation.

“I’ll give you anything! All the coffers of Camelot are at your disposal if you’ll bring her to me!”

“I’ve never been insulted by such a cheap offer in my life.” Morgan was cross for a reason she couldn’t entirely understand. She was no ally of Guinevere’s. Why should she care what happened to the stuck-up little prude who had chastised her for promiscuity, as if anyone would have cared if she’d been a King instead of a Queen? But neither did she care for being ordered about by her own nephew, or treated as if she were a simple procuress. To dislike a woman was one thing; to sell her for gold was quite another.

Mordred slammed his fist against the table. Morgan repressed a smile at the thought that he’d probably hurt his hand while doing so.

“Are you trying to see a King beg, Aunt? Is that what you wish for? A King does not beg, a King commands! Use your magic, deny me no longer!”

Morgan’s wine goblet clattered to the floor.

“No,” she whispered, but it wasn’t in response to him. She was in a world of her own.

_ “Use your magic, deny me no longer!” _

_ Young Morgan hid behind a corner as the man who took her father’s shape spoke to one of his banner men. Her father would never have spoken to one of his men in such a voice, and none of her father’s men would have dared to look back at him with such insolence if he had. _

_ “You’ll have her, my King. Control yourself. From here, the disguise works only as well as your composure. After tonight, you’ll have what you want and I’ll have what I want, and then I wash my hands of this whole cursed affair.” The man in the form of her father’s subordinate sighed. “Go on, then. She’s in her bedroom. Get it over with.” _

_ Morgan remembered the odd shapes she saw that night- the first time she ever used her second sight, though she did not realize it in the moment. It was the gift that would come to define her life, the gift her sister never received to her own sorrow, but that night she did not recognize it for what it was, nor would she have thought it a gift if she had. All she knew was that beneath the sight of her father’s face, she saw something else trying to form. It flickered in and out of sight, like watching ripples in the water, but there was something undeniably there beneath the visage of the King of Cornwall. Hair that was blond rather than brown, eyes that were tight and hard rather than soft and open, lines on his face that marked where a helmet had been. Her own father never looked like that when he took off his helm. _

_ And beneath the visage of the banner man, she saw an ageless face with hawkish eyes, all red hair and blue skin paint, and for just one moment those hawk eyes had turned towards her. She stared at the man, and he gave her a small, almost imperceptible nod. Acknowledgement. Merlin probably thought he was being kind. _

A tear rolled down Morgan’s cheek.

“So that’s who you think we are, is it?” she asked her nephew. “Uther and Merlin. You wish to steal a woman from the man she loves, first for a night and then for the rest of her life, and I jump to your command.”

“What are you babbling about, Aunt? Can you aid me or not?”

Morgan stood with a swiftness that nearly knocked over her chair. She was not a tall woman, but with her green cloak billowing out behind her and the queenly glare in her eyes, she looked far larger than her natural frame.

“Alright, then. If you’re going to act like a spoiled child, I shall treat you like a spoiled child.” Her words were calculated to be the ones that would wound Mordred the most, and she could see it working. “We are bound together, by blood if nothing else, and so I shall give you one chance to save your own life. Come back with me to Avalon. No doubt you’ll find some fair druidess who will be only too glad to lie with you beneath an apple tree. Come with me, and I can guarantee your life.”

Mordred’s face seized up with fury.

“You can guarantee my life? I am the King of the Britons!”

“And I’m sure your funeral will be as magnificent as Uther’s was. The first man I ever poisoned. Beware your hostages and your women. Now get out of my way, little King. I have more important things to do than play bawd for you.”

Mordred’s hand went to his sword, but Morgan knew he would not be foolish enough to draw it. Not upon her. Instead, he turned to one of his knights.

“Kill her!”

“My liege,” said the poor man, “your aunt? The Queen of-”

“I said, kill her! If she’ll not live as my subject, she may die as one!”

Mordred’s man had hardly taken a step forward when Morgan stretched out her hand. One moment there had been a knight with his sword raised, the next there was a stone statue in the outline of one.

“There,” she said. “I’ve done a bit of magic for you after all. May you be pleased with it, Your Majesty.”

The air rippled and darkened about Morgan as she faded from view.

“Long live the king.”

***

Gawain opened his eyes slowly, surprised to be able to open them at all. The land he found himself in was no castle, but one of lush green forests and heavy twilight in the sky. Distant laughter and music teased at his ears, and unearthly light danced before his eyes. Faerie. His mother had spoken of it, and he had been forced to venture there more than once in his career as a knight-errant.

“It is good to see you again, old friend. Though I wish it were under different circumstances.”

The Green Knight stood above him, as fierce and as resplendent as he had first appeared that Christmas in Gawain’s youth. Since that night, he had seen the Green Knight’s face above the doorways of inns, carved into doors, even looming at him out of the trees, but never in the flesh. His face was friendlier than he had remembered.

“Why have you taken me here?” Gawain asked. “Mordred- I have to stop him-”

“You’ll not be stopping anyone, with that blade in your belly. I wish I could say different, but Mordred’s steel was not stopped by passing any tests of honor.” The Green Knight extended a hand to pull Gawain off the ground, and he took it. “Welcome to the afterlife, boy. You’ve come neither to heaven nor to hell, but to the land beyond both.”

“But- I don’t understand.” Gawain looked at the forest around him. “I was a good Christian.”

“Perhaps you thought you were, but in your heart you were a man of the old ways. A man who worshipped the land and all that was magical upon it. Your mother raised you on stories of Cú Chulainn, and you spent your life trying to become him. By choice or not, you’re a pagan. You’re no mortal knight any longer, but a legend.”

The Green Knight extended his hand.

“Come, Sir Gawain. There is one who awaits you in the Green Chapel, but not with any deathly challenge.”

Gawain followed his old enemy- his old friend- through the gleaming green of the woods, to where the ancient stone crags formed a natural path to a circle, flooded with green light.

“She was a creature of the land, too,” said the Green Knight. “Can’t live as a witch of the woods without it rubbing off on you.”

Gawain entered the clearing and saw his dark eyed wife, sweet Ragnelle as beautiful as on her first transformation, her clothing mended and her bruises faded as if she had never been attacked. She took a step towards him.

“Took you long enough to get here, my tardy love,” she said softly.

Gawain threw himself into her arms, crying apologies for not saving her, moaning gratitude that he could see her again. Though there was no clear danger to them after death, he held her tightly and made every promise he knew, and she murmured to him that she believed them all. Gawain didn’t know how long they held each other before he felt the Green Knight’s hand upon his shoulder.

“Come, my beautiful bride and groom. Camelot is lost to you forever. Stranger adventures lie in wait within the forests of faerie. And perhaps the two of you will know the world of man again some Christmas night, when you challenge a handsome youth to a game of honor. But for now, it is time to let that world behind, and take your seat among the world of myth.”


End file.
